


Thou Art

by Arcafira



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crowley has Trauma from the Fall (Good Omens), Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), I showed him all the kingdoms of the world, Jesus' temptation in the desert, Light Angst, M/M, Scene: Crucifixion of Jesus 33 AD (Good Omens), canon-typical alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcafira/pseuds/Arcafira
Summary: When Crowley leaves Jesus at the end of forty days, angels descend to tend to him. Crowley’s a safe distance away by the time they arrive—no need to invite a smiting—but a tingle along his spine stops him. He glances over his shoulder, and he swears he’d know that silhouette anywhere. There’s Aziraphale, shading the Son of God with an outstretched wing.--Crowley is assigned to tempt Jesus in the desert. The experience briefly rekindles his hope in the ineffable plan.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Thou Art

Here’s a man in the desert, wandering alone and unequipped. This must be him. If Crowley’s being completely honest, he’s a little nervous to be meeting the Son of God—wants to make a good first impression but doesn’t know where that impulse comes from. It smacks of  _ goodness _ , of  _ caring  _ about others. He tamps down the desire, miracles the sand from his robes and sandals, and approaches.

“Heyo,” he says, sauntering up on Jesus’ left side. “Looking a little lost aren’t you?”

The man takes one look at him—and Crowley is startled by how absolutely  _ normal  _ he appears—and turns away. “Get thee behind me, devil,” he commands, and Crowley is caught off guard by the resonance of the command. His muscles seize. His jaw clamps shut. He can’t move, can’t speak. The man stumbles away, looking miserable and very dehydrated. Crowley, now paralyzed under the punishing sun, can’t help but watch him go.

* * *

The force of the rebuke doesn’t relent until the next day which means Crowley’s had plenty of time to cycle through every possible emotion he could have about this initial encounter.  _ I’ll show him. Maybe I’ll actually do my job for once. And he’ll be sorry for it _ . Then,  _ He couldn’t have known my intentions. I’m sure I just surprised him.  _ And,  _ Oh, I forgot to introduce myself _ . Crowley’s thinking of the angel and his posh manners, wondering  _ What would Aziraphale do?  _ when the rebuke lets him go. Determined, the demon follows the footprints of the Son of God deeper into the desert.

“Look, I think we got started off on the wrong foot,” Crowley calls out when he spots him.

Jesus doesn’t turn, doesn’t give any sign of acknowledgment.

Crowley makes sure Jesus sees him approaching this time. “Name’s Crowley,” he introduces himself. “I know an angel. He could vouch for me.”

Jesus doesn’t drop his guarded look for a moment.

“His name’s Aziraphale,” Crowley hurries on, worried that there’s another rebuke on the man’s tongue. “Maybe you’ve met him?” This earns him a twitch of eyebrows, a hint of surprise, and Crowley sees his way forward. “We met soon after your mum made the garden. The angel was guarding the eastern gate. He was kind to me even though he obviously didn’t have to be. Shouldn’t have been.” Crowley swallows, blinks a series of rare blinks. Is the wind kicking up dust? “Anyway, he’s kind like you. Kind to everyone. Even people that others don’t think deserve kindness.”

There’s a wrinkle of curiosity on Jesus’ brow, and Crowley wonders how much he can discern. How deeply is the divine anchored in his mortal vessel? Can he see that Crowley is telling the truth?

“So, er, you seemed like you were having a rough time. And I wanted to offer you some water?” Crowley says, frustrated with the way his tone involuntarily turns upward. He may be a demon, but talking to the Son of God would make anyone nervous.

Extending a cup of miracled water to the man turns him wary again. “Thou will not snare me with thy devilish tricks,” he says, turning away again.

Crowley rolls his eyes and follows, drinking the water himself. No need to waste.

* * *

They’ve been wandering the desert for a fortnight, but Jesus hasn’t attempted to rebuke him again, hasn’t so much as told him to go away. It’s slow progress with this boy but progress nonetheless. He trails after him, the Son of God’s demonic shadow.

“How powerful are you, really?” Crowley muses aloud, mostly to himself. He’s used to Jesus pointedly ignoring him by now. “Are you only starving out here in the desert because your mum said it’s some kind of test? Couldn’t you just—I don’t know—make bread out of rocks if you wanted?” Crowley hefts a particularly large stone from the ground and it becomes a fresh loaf of bread in his hands. “Like so?”

Jesus stares at it, and Crowley recognizes that look; it’s one that he’s intimately familiar with. It doesn’t take much to tempt a starving man—

But again, Jesus is turning away.

Crowley bites back a frustrated noise and tosses the bread over his shoulder. When it hits the ground, it’s a stone again.

* * *

“I really don’t think it’s wise to be this high up in your state,” Crowley warns.

The boy’s not well. If he weren’t divine, Crowley’s sure he would have died of thirst by now. For anyone else, starvation would be a near fate. He’s gotten it into his head to climb a mountain and so here they are at its peak. Jesus teeters at the precipice, staring out as if in search of something.

“I mean, I’m sure your mum would send some angels to catch you if you had a little tumble, but I mean, best not to tempt fate, eh?”

This gets Jesus to look back at him, to truly look at him for the first time since he mentioned Aziraphale. He goes so far as to _smile_ at him, and Crowley thinks he really must have lost it now. “But thou art the tempter,” Jesus responds. He seems to think he’s being very clever. 

He lowers himself carefully to a seat, his feet dangling out over the desert below. Crowley joins him.

“What are you planning on doing when you’re done with all this?” Crowley says, waving a hand out over the desert. He’s certain the boy will pass whatever test She’s set out for him. Crowley hasn’t exactly been trying his best at this whole temptation business. He’s just a kid, after all. Comparatively, anyway.

“I want to start my ministry,” Jesus says, voice hoarse from lack of water.

“What d’you plan on telling the humans? Got some inspired wisdom from God Herself?”

Jesus is quiet for a moment. When he answers, he looks Crowley full in the face. “I want them to be kind to one another.”

Here’s a haggard man, tortured by the desert elements for his simple but grand conviction. Crowley can’t help but feel hopeful with him and inspired by him, as so many others will be. He wants to believe that She does have a plan that is good. That the humans can be redeemed after what he did in the garden, that there’s more to Her divine promise than a simple rainbow.

“You’d make a great leader with a heart like yours,” Crowley says, and he spins a vision for the boy. The streets and halls and courtyards of the greatest kingdoms in the world flash by them as they’re carried through on the chariot of Crowley’s imagination. “I could set you up as a king. You could—”

“No,” says Jesus, and the images die around them. “I will not help the people by placing myself above them. I will live amongst them with a humble heart.”

Crowley leans back on his hands, a smile creeping over his face. “Or that.”

When he leaves Jesus at the end of forty days, angels descend to tend to him. Crowley’s a safe distance away by the time they arrive—no need to invite a smiting—but a tingle along his spine stops him. He glances over his shoulder, and he swears he’d know that silhouette anywhere. There’s Aziraphale, shading the Son of God with an outstretched wing.

* * *

“I showed him all the kingdoms of the world,” Crowley says, aiming for casual. 

This moment feels impossible to endure. She hates her demonic predisposition towards sensing absence. Pain and want are the shadow sides of comfort and security, after all. Absences aren’t something the angel seems able to feel, and so he’s as numb as the humans around them--hurt and concerned but unable to feel it as viscerally as Crowley, unable to sense its source and weight. The ambient pain presses down on him, insistent and relentless. But she’s a demon. Human pain shouldn’t make her feel so miserable. She knows but doesn’t want to acknowledge why. The boy isn’t merely human. He’s divine. His pain is divine. 

Crowley feels her hope shrink with every anguished cry. Her questions—the ones that earned her damnation—surge anew, angrier this time.

When they finally leave the site, it’s dark and Crowley’s head is pounding with a headache. She suggests that she and Aziraphale find someplace to drink anyway. The angel trails after her quietly, sensing the mood that’s been brewing in Crowley all evening. Not through any kind of angelic sense. No, this is too dark for that. Rather, he knows because he has known Crowley all this time.

By the time they’re seated at a table, Crowley has downed three glasses before either of them has said a word. Aziraphale’s usual fluttery hesitation is especially pronounced in the face of  _ whatever it is  _ that Crowley’s feeling. 

“ _ Her own son _ ,” Crowley says eventually.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t see that, knowing how you reacted last time.”

“Last time?”

“The ark.”

Crowley makes a sound in the back of her throat. “That, yeah.” She tips back the last of a fourth drink.

“I know how sensitive you are, but—”

“Sensitive!” Crowley echoes a bit too loudly. “M’a demon. Not a sensitive bone in my body.”

Aziraphale stares down into his drink. He’s barely taken a sip from it.

Now that she has a couple drinks in her, Crowley’s thoughts spill free. She has other targets now, not just the Almighty. “The Marys were there, but where were the Apostles? You orbit someone so kind for so long who has so much faith in Her. So much faith they’re bright with it. Someone who has true faith. Doesn’t question. And then—” 

Crowley doesn’t miss the way Aziraphale’s throat bobs, the way he’s suddenly unable to make eye contact. Despite all the drink, Crowley’s mouth is suddenly dry. How does she always do this with Aziraphale? How does she always steer the conversation so close to this sore spot? 

She takes another drink, stammers towards the end of her statement. “How could you just . . . run away? At the end. When your entire world is just crumbling. Dying.”

Aziraphale’s hand is shaking when he takes his drink. He puts it back down. “I suppose it’d be frightening to witness. In the face of that, anyone might abandon hope in a plan.”

“But it’s  _ Her  _ plan.”

“Yes, well—”

“You wouldn’t,” says Crowley and immediately hates herself for it. Why has she drunk so much? She knows how it loosens her serpent tongue.

She thinks about the temptation in the desert, how she genuinely tried to help Jesus by offering water, how she’d only asked him questions because she thought, as God’s son, he might understand Her plan better. Maybe, Crowley had hoped, understanding could help her let go of some of that ancient feeling still simmering in her gut.

The tavern around them suddenly feels too loud, too bright for such a solemn day. They are mourners in the midst of a party.

“Do you, ah, have work in the morning?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley shakes her head, thinks back to her assignment to tempt the Son of God. “They said they expected me to fail at the job but that the tempting needed to be done anyway. Thing is, I didn’t even try. I just wanted to know—”

Her throat tightens around the words. Aziraphale helps her up from the table, and she doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or the loss that makes her lean against him.

Out on the streets, it’s quiet and cool, and Crowley feels some of her tension ease.

“I have rooms in town,” Aziraphale says, so low Crowley almost misses it. “If you need to rest.”

She finds her voice again. “I’d like that, yeah.”

She doesn’t have to be alone with this. Even if they are on opposite sides, Aziraphale will still offer the support of his arm, will still offer her shelter under his wing. It is the only divine certainty she has. And for tonight, that will have to be enough.


End file.
